


i follow you just like a shadow

by amosanguis



Series: powered AUs [14]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Chicago Cubs, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Non-Linear Narrative, Pain, Prophetic Dreams, Unreliable Narrator, Wedding date, title from a country song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 04:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10268144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: “You need to pay attention,” his grandma says, tapping her index-finger against his forehead.  “If you pay attention, then you’ll know all you need.  You have the Sight, boy, don’t ignore it.”Or, the one where there's what Anthony Sees and what Anthony does, and it's all he can to do keep his head above water.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesaddestboner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaddestboner/gifts).



> \--Title from "Safe" by Miranda Lambert.  
> \--Alex, I started this during the MLB Exchange when I couldn't figure out which prompt to write, lol. Enjoy!

-z-

 

“You need to _pay attention_ ,” his grandma says, tapping her index-finger against his forehead.  “If you pay attention, then you’ll know all you need.  You have the Sight, boy, don’t ignore it.”

 

-x-

 

Kris says, “I don’t think it’s such a great idea.”

And Anthony knows he’s heard the words before – he’s heard them in a dream where nothing after this moment goes right.

After this, it’s too late. 

After this, Kris finds Anthony with his now-married ex is in his lap when Kris, giddy off champagne, comes into the room – words of love and adoration on his lips before they’re torn from his throat at the sight of them.

After this, there’s three months of silence between them before Anthony finds himself screaming outside of Kris’s apartment begging for something other than Kris’s silence.

 

-x-

 

Anthony is sixteen going on forty and he’s throwing baseballs as hard as he can against the walls – watching the plaster crack to pieces and crumble to dust.

“Sickness,” he says to grandma at the door, tears on his face.  He whirls on her, “I have cancer and I’m gonna die.  I don’t want this!  Who wants to know when they’ll die?!”

She says nothing, just hands him another baseball.

(Turns out the funeral Anthony Sees isn’t his own.)

 

-x-

 

Kris says, “I don’t think it’s such a great idea.”

And Anthony knows he should’ve listened – he knows it when he finds Jacob on the other side of his hotel room door; knows it when he gets that strange sense of déjà vu when Jacob crawls into his lap; knows it when the doorknob twists and Kris, giggling to himself, walks in.

Knows it when he sees the way Kris _breaks_.  (They had gotten so much closer these last few days, laughing and _touching_ and it’s everything Anthony didn’t See.  And then it’s all gone.)

 

-x-

 

Anthony looks up – something he doesn’t have to do much these days with his latest growth spurt – and he finds no words.

The large black horses snort, their breaths coming out in bright clouds in the cold air, they toss their heads and scrape their metal shoes against the street, sparking – bright yellow flashes that’re gone in an instant.  Their necks curl into tight crests, covered by their thick manes, as they chew at their bits.

The sky above him is appropriately dark, the sound of thunder rumbling far in the distance.

He walks in front of the horse-drawn hearse – hands folded in front of him and his head down and he remembers: _You need to_ pay attention _.  If you pay attention, then you’ll know all you need_.

When it’s over and he’s left alone - he digs his fingers into the freshly turned dirt and screams.  He screams and he screams and he screams and he’s echoed by the encroaching storm.

 _You’ll know all you need_.

 

-

 

The next night he dreams about endless blue eyes and “I don’t think it’s such a great idea” and “Anthony, I have to tell you someth—oh.”

When he wakes up, he showers and ignores it all.  He swings his bat harder and harder, crowds the plate – daring each pitcher he faces to hit him (then he digs his fingers into the bruise, hard and unrelenting until his mind is blank and he doesn’t think about that mystery man who questions his ideas).

 

-

 

When Anthony meets Kris Bryant – he recognizes him immediately. 

Anthony just lets the bruises get bigger.

 

-x-

 

“I’m sorry,” Anthony says, his forehead pressed against Kris’s door.  His voice is raw, broken, with the number of times he’s said the same words over and over and over again.  He bangs against the door, says it once more, “Kris – please.  Kris, I’m sorry.”

Kris never opens the door.

 

-x-

 

Anthony jerks awake in a cold sweat, the sound of someone gently knocking on his door.  He swings himself off the couch and it takes him a second to realize where he was – a hotel room.

He’s in _the_ hotel room.

“Anthony?  Can I talk to you for a sec?”

He’s in _the_ hotel room and that’s Jacob’s voice on the other side of the door and Anthony’s hand covers his mouth to stop himself from screaming.

He doesn’t answer the door.

 

-

 

“Anthony,” Kris is calling, giggling, as he opens their hotel room door, “I have something to tell you.”

Anthony turns from where he’s been staring out of the window – counting down first the minutes, then the seconds – and asks, “What’s up, Kris?”

“I think I was wrong,” Kris says, walking up to Anthony – as cool and confident as he does when he steps up to home.

“About what?” Anthony asks, swallowing around the sudden dryness in his mouth.

“This was a good idea,” he says, leaning into Anthony’s space.  They’ve always been more comfortable inside each other’s personal space than outside of it, but the days spent together in this room, sharing a bed and a bathroom and any gossip they could wrangle out of the bestmen has brought them inexplicably closer.

Anthony _hmm_ ’s low in the back of his throat as he rests a hand on the back of Kris’s neck, fingers stroking the hair at his nape.  He opens his mouth to say something – anything to acknowledge this moment or the one that almost was – instead he says nothing as he pulls Kris down for a kiss.

It’s one that Kris returns whole-heartedly.

 

 -z-

 

End.


End file.
